Hotels/Restaurants/Casinos

How Japan fell in love with Halloween for adults

In Tokyo, All Hallows’ Eve has gone from nonexistence to surpass New Year’s as a party and club event. Here’s why…

Courtesy AB Promotions

Revellers gather in costume at a typically crowded Tokyo Halloween party in this photo from 2013. Largely unknown a decade ago, Halloween has taken off in Japan, though really just for adults.

By

JeffW. Richards

TOKYO (MarketWatch) — Until only recently, Japan never celebrated Halloween. And why would it? The nation honors the spirits of its ancestors in August, during the ancient Buddhist festival of O-bon, when ancestral spirits are said to revisit the family altars —and when reported encounters with ghosts and spirits reach a fevered peak.

But over the past decade, Tokyo in particular has come to embrace Halloween. Or at least the grown-ups have: While there’s no such thing as “trick or treating” for the kids, adults in ever-larger numbers pull out all the stops when it comes to innovative costumes, lavish club events and all of the escapism that goes along with it.

And it’s not just one or two nights at the end of the month. No, in the nation’s capital, the creep of costumed revelers on the streets starts as early as the first weekend in October, much to the delight of bar and club owners. The parties peak on the Fridays and Saturdays before Halloween, but the clubs, bars and promoters will keep greasing the wheel until the first weekend of November if it’s at all feasible. A quick look at Tokyo’s iFlyer and Clubberia websites (the online event engines crucial to Tokyo’s nightlife) shows 52 major events on Oct. 25 alone.

“Just as with many other non-native cultural traditions and holidays, such as Christmas and Valentine’s Day, the Japanese have adopted Halloween in their own way and in a way that suits their culture,” says Anthony Blick, a senior manager at Kyodo Public Relations Co.
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and a longtime Tokyo resident who has worked in the local nightclub scene as a producer and promoter.

“With Japan’s history and tradition of ‘cosplay,’ it was quite natural for the costume aspect of Halloween to be readily adopted here,” Blick says, referring to Japan’s wildly popular “costume play” subculture, centered on manga, anime and videogame-character role play.

That magic equation of nightclubs plus costumes is what drives the buzz around the not-so-spooky celebrations in Tokyo. And while a few internationally recognized brands get behind it, the real beneficiaries are the alcohol companies, the clubs and the retail-fashion shops that help fuel the frenzy.

Blick sees further room for the advertising and promotional aspect of the holiday to grow: “Personally, I believe brands that wish to appeal to the teens and 20s age demographics are missing a great chance here to connect with this valuable segment in a meaningful way.”

“My guess is that the popularity of Halloween has accelerated so quickly that brands haven’t yet noticed the phenomenon or the potential for opportunities to connect,” Blick says.

One company in Japan that did catch on quickly was Fox TV
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While Fox (previously part of MarketWatch parent News Corp.) may be ubiquitous to viewers in the U.S., in Japan the channel — launched here in 1998 — is synonymous with American entertainment, and reporting on Tokyo Halloween events is now a regular part of Fox’s seasonal programming schedule.

“You’re talking about a culture that has embraced cosplay. For many of the young adults here, Halloween is cooler than cosplay,” says Dan Smith, executive producer for Fox International Channels Japan, which has gone from reporting on one party a year to tying-in up to six Halloween parties or promotions over the month. In fact, Smith says, Halloween has become one of the most sponsor-friendly periods of the year.

“Halloween in Japan offers us a natural lead-in to the annual launch of ‘The Walking Dead’ on several of our Fox channels. The over-the-top nature of the costumes, makeup and Halloween-themed parties gives us plenty of opportunities to showcase the show,” he says of the popular AMC
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zombie thriller, aired in Japan on Fox.

“Last year, we did a ‘Walking Dead’ promotion on Halloween day. We were able to attract more than 1,000 people in full zombie costumes for a ‘Zombie March’ we did on the Tokyo Tower. That’s something nobody could have foreseen happening just a few years ago,” Smith says.

Kyodo PR’s Blick also sees the concurrent growth in social networks as helping stoke the fire of Japan’s Halloween craze: “I think that the ability to share and see photos on social-networking sites has really helped to fuel the growth in popularity of Halloween in Japan.”

“People, especially teenagers and folks in their 20s, who are the drivers of pop culture and trends in Japan, want to ‘see and be seen’ in costumes for Halloween, and this is amplified through social media,” he says.

Meanwhile, Sach Jobb, iFlyer’s chief operating officer, has seen a steady growth in clients’ promotion of Halloween events. While iFlyer has 2,000 such parties in their database this year, last year they had only 1,500, and the year before that significantly less.

“Where [New Year’s Eve] countdown and year-end events have traditionally been the biggest season for us, it has been eclipsed by Halloween in the last couple of years,” Jobb says.

“Club owners now tell me it’s the best business opportunity of the whole year,” adds Fox’s Smith. “I live in the Roppongi district [an area of Tokyo known for its nightlife], and it’s now common for taxis to refuse to take fares going there on the days leading up to — and especially on — Halloween. One taxi driver told me it takes nearly 45 minutes to get through the revelers for what is normally a five-minute drive.”

So it seems that the land that brought us anime and manga has now managed to turn a one-night Western children’s party into a month-long spectacle, providing a welcome cash boost to the entertainment and restaurant industries in the process.

Dan Smith / Fox International Japan

As Halloween grows in popularity in Japan, some brands are taking advantage of the trend. Here, fans of "The Walking Dead" gather in zombie costume at the Tokyo Tower in a holiday-linked promotion for the show.

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